bhartleynhs - Sara Courtemanche, 1920s review

1920s

Key People

Gregor Mendel did experiments on the hybridization of vegetables, which helped genetic research.
Thomas Hunt Morgan did experiments with fruit flies to reveal how several genes could be transmitted together, also showed how genes were arranged on a chromosome.

John B. Watson said maternal affection was not sufficient, but women needed advice and assistance of experts and professionals.

Margaret Sanger promoted different methods of birth control because she thought large families led to poverty.

Charles Lindbergh was the first person to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Gertrude Stein wrote the Lost Generation, which referred to young Americans emerging from WW1 as having a sense of personal alienation.
H. L. Mencken was known as a debunker; magazines ridiculed everything like religion, politics, arts, and democracy.

Charles and Mary Beard stressed economic factors in tracing the development of modern society and emphasized the clash of economic interests as central to American history.

Warren Harding was president from 1921-1923, Republican from Ohio. He ran against James Cox; he promised to “return to normalcy,” a policy that called for an end to the abnormal era after WW1.

Calvin Coolidge was president from 1923-1929; he was a Republican and took over after Harding died, then served his own single term. Coolidge appointed commissioners to the Federal Trade Commission and the Interstate Commerce Commission. Regulation of taxes was nearly non-existent, even though he wanted to lower taxes.

Andrew Mellon was a banker, industrialist, philanthropist, art collector, and Secretary of the Treasury. He wanted to reduce the debt from WW1; noticed that if taxes were too high then people tried to avoid paying them. His plan had four main points; cut the top income tax rate from 77% to 24%, cut taxes on low incomes from 4% to .5%, reduce the federal estate tax, and increase government efficiency.
The Fugitives were young poets, novelists, and critics from VanderbiltUniversity, some people were Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Allen Tate. They said the South managed to maintain a non-industrial, agrarian way of life, and later became known as the Agrarians.

Key Events

Commercial broadcasting began in 1920 with the radio, it started with Morse code, then Reginald Fessenden created a way to transmit speech and music, later known as HAM radio.
The first commercial radio station in America was KDKA in Pittsburg in 1920.
There were computers by the early 1930s. Led by Vannevar Bush, researchers at MIT created the first analog computer. Then, Howard Aiken built a more complex computer with memory storage; it could multiply 11-digit numbers in 30 seconds.

General Motors was the largest automobile manufacturer by 1920 and it was the 5th largest corporation. William Durant was the founder of GM.

First advertising firms were by N. W. Ayer and J. Walter Thompson; they tried to identify products with a particular lifestyle and made it seem like purchasing a product would be an experience.

Over 100 million people saw movies in the 1930s compared to 40 million in the 1920s. Sound motion pictures were introduced in 1927. Motion Picture Association gave Will Nays power to review films and ban anything offensive.
Harlem Renaissance

League of women voters was a national women’s party created in response to the suffrage victory.

The Sheppard-Towner Act provided federal funds to states to establish prenatal and child healthcare programs.

Harlem Renaissance was in Harlem, New York; there were new clubs with jazz musicians like Duke Ellington, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fletcher Henderson; also theaters with musical comedies and vaudeville acts. It was the center of literature, poetry, and African root art.

Prohibition was a ban of sale, consumption, transport, and possession of alcohol from 1920-1933, also became the 18th Amendment

National Origins Act of 1924 limited the annual number of immigrants to 2% of the number of people from that country already in America.

The New Klan was founded in 1915 in Georgia. It adopted a modern business system of recruiting people; they preached Americanism and purification of politics with strong racism, anti-Catholicism, anti-communism, natavism, and anti-Semitism. They had an estimated 4-5 million members in the mid 1920s.

Scopes Monkey Trial, also known as the State of Tennessee v. Scopes. John Scopes was accused of violating the Butler Act by teaching evolution in school; he was found guilty but it was overturned based on a technicality.

Teapot Dome, 1922-1923, leases at the Teapot Dome and 2 other private oil companies were under investigation. Albert Fall was convicted of taking bribes from oil companies.

Main Idea/Themes

Source of economic boom: European industry was bad; there was better technology in America.
Trade associations were national organizations to encourage coordination in production and marketing techniques.
Welfare capitalism included shortened work weeks, raised pay, instituted paid vacations to keep workers happy and prevent rebellion.
American Federation of Labor remained consistent to the concept of the craft union where workers were organized based on skills, unskilled workers were ignored.
Pink Collar Jobs were low paying service occupations with many of the same problems as manufacturing employment; they were mainly women’s jobs; secretaries, salesclerks, telephone operators etc.
Consumerism was when many men and women could afford a lot of unnecessary goods, so they bought a lot of things.

Automobiles expanded the geographical horizons of people who didn’t travel a lot. Cars made travel much easier and made vacations cheaper.
Vehicles could now transport magazines/newspapers easily and efficiently to more people. Time magazine was founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden in 1923.
Modernist religion; some taught their followers to abandon some of the traditional tenets of evangelical Christianity. Harry Emerson Fosdick was a pastor of RiversideChurch in New York, he argued that Christianity would “furnish an inward spiritual dynamic for radiant and triumphant living.”

Women had limited opportunities in the workforce because people couldn’t decide what was appropriate for a woman to do; many worked in fashion, education, social work, and nursing,
The idea of compassionate marriages was introduced, saying that couples should have more sex for pleasure instead of just for reproduction.
Flappers were a new era of women; they smoke, drank, danced, dressed inappropriately, wore more makeup, and went to wild parties; mainly lower middle class and working women.

More people were going to school, increase from 2.2 million people to 5.5 million; 600,000 college students in 1918 increased to 1.2 million in 1930. Schools were providing training in engineering, management, and economics.

Many schools were seen for sports and unification where kids could find themselves.
The self-made man was the belief that any person could achieve wealth through hard work.
Disenchanted people isolated themselves and began a restless search for personal fulfillment instead of trying to influence/change society.
Many intellectuals believed that success and the idea of being successful dominated American life.
African Americans tried to prove that they were as good as whites, including their culture.
Religious fundamentalism was when several scientists joined with liberal protestant clergy in the 1920s to popularize their modernist religious views.
The Democratic Party favored liberal positions, farmers, laborers and labor unions, religious and ethnic minorities; they opposed unregulated business and finance and favored progressive income taxes.

Hoover’s “Associationalism” wanted trade associations, and sought to make the commerce department a powerful service organization. He empowered to forge cooperative voluntary partnerships between government and business.